"Life is itself a game of football"

Month: April 2018

It’s been a while since I posted anything on this page – 279 days to be exact – and thought that it would take something fairly significant to drag me out of my university studies and back to the Johnstone Paint Trophy of football blogs. Well it was the aforementioned studies, in fact, that presented such an opportunity this previous week.

For those that don’t know, I am currently researching the linguistics of football commentary for my final year dissertation at the University of Nottingham – squeezing football into as much relevant work as possible has been a trend of the year – and in an innocuous moment of procrastination, I decided to bombard several TV commentators with requests for a chat. I didn’t have a particular gap in my work for the quotes, nor did I think anyone would reply, but I thought it would be pretty cool to get some insight from the horse’s mouth.

Not three minutes passed after I sent tweets to my victims when a notification popped up on my phone…

Jesus. Darren Fletcher, as in Fletch out of Fletch and Sav, was happy to talk to me… “Mum, I’ve made it.” Not only was he willing to talk to me, but I enjoyed an excellent half-an-hour with BT Sport’s voice of football, who, by the way, was fresh off the back of commentating on one of the best goals the Champions League had ever seen.

This conversation didn’t take place for the purpose of this blog, it will feature significantly in my dissertation, and so the topics discussed are very heavy on the art of commentary itself. That being said, the insight was too interesting to keep to myself so I’ve picked out the best bits here. I hope you enjoy and a massive thanks to Darren for taking time out of a busy schedule to talk to me for so long. Top bloke…